What Anonymous Got Wrong in Ferguson

On August 14, 2014 at 6:45 A.M., shortly after arriving at work, Bryan Willman, a stocky, blond thirty-two year old police dispatcher in St. Ann, Missouri, received a call from the St. Louis Police Department’s Intelligence Unit. “You’ve been named as the shooter, by the group Anonymous, in the Michael Brown case,” the intelligence officer said. Willman, who had been working sixteen-hour days dispatching cops from St. Ann to help out in Ferguson, thought it was a joke, though he felt too shocked to ask. Anonymous, the hive of hackers and activists that I wrote about in this week’s magazine, had just outed Willman on Twitter. “Um, O.K.,” Willman replied.

Willman had never been to Ferguson or heard of Anonymous. He wasn’t even a uniformed officer. After the protests began, he’d taken the advice of the F.B.I., who’d suggested that officers in the area change their social-media profiles and passwords for added security. Willman switched his first name on his Facebook account to Scooby, after his favorite childhood cartoon. But Anons, who’d been scouring the public listings of workers in the area police departments, zeroed in on him anyway. They interpreted his name change as a sign of guilt. “Officer Bryan Willman thinks nobody will find him,” one Anon later tweeted, and posted pictures of him shooting a toy gun at a video arcade. “Does he look like a murderer?” another tweeted. “I think so.”

Inside an Internet Relay Chat (I.R.C.) room designated for Operation Ferguson, a person calling himself TheAnonMessage was among those singling out Willman as the shooter. He and other Anons had been collecting information about Willman online, including, according to a transcript from a chat room, alleged “trouble with taxes” and an alleged theft. (Neither allegation has been proven.) Based on a string of odd logic that included analysis of Willman’s choice of alias and of his haircut (both Willman and Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Michael Brown, are blond), some of the Anons concluded that Scooby Willman seemed guilty enough. Before his tweet naming Willman went public, TheAnonMessage wrote to the dissenting Anons, “Sorry in advance, but im about to release this.” TheAnonMessage had a reputation as a reckless young hacker among some in the movement; in an online chat, Doemela, one of the organizers of the Operation Ferguson protests, described him to me as a “sick boy” who “does this for the attention.” But, despite the concerns of Doemela and others (in I.R.C. chat, one Anon cautioned, “Don’t you think this is dangerous? People would definitely want to murder him”), TheAnonMessage tweeted: “BREAKING NEWS: The name of the office who shot #MikeBrown – NAME: OFFICER WILLMAN, BRYAN P., Respondent - #Ferguson #Anonymous.”

Because much of the outside world does not understand the nature of Anonymous–that it’s decentralized and has no leaders, that anyone can claim affiliation–many treated TheAnonMessage’s tweet as an official statement. Anons circulated Willman’s photos, date of birth, address, and other personal information online. Neither he nor the intelligence officer on the other end of the line knew what to anticipate, and they figured some basic security precautions were in order. “You might want to change your bank-account information,” the intelligence officer offered.

At 9:45 A.M., the St. Louis County Police Department issued a statement on Twitter saying that Anonymous had named the wrong man: “Bryan Willman is not even an officer with Ferguson or St. Louis County PD. Do not release more info on this random citizen,” it read. Twitter suspended @TheAnonMessage (he later returned to Twitter under the handle @TheAnonMessage2), but Willman’s name had already been reported widely in the news. Yamichi Alcindor, a reporter with USA Today, went to the address for Willman released by Anonymous, but he no longer lived there. Instead, she found Kathie Warnack, an ex-girlfriend of Willman’s father, on the front porch, weeping. “I guess I’m going to have to sleep with my gun and put cameras on the house," the woman said. “Now I have to defend myself, and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Willman checked his social-media accounts–Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter–which were being flooded with hundreds of death threats. One read, “If we saw you walking in the streets, we’re going to prison rape you and then pop a cap in the back of your dome.” He shut down his accounts. The department suggested he go into lockdown. Willman insisted on doing so at his house, where he lived alone. “I wasn’t going to let that situation put me out of my home,” he said. The department arranged for him to have twenty-four-hour police protection. His car was moved to a secure location. For the safety of his friends and family, he allowed no visitors.

He stayed in his house for six days. Willman is a man of routine, and he struggled with the disruption. “I was extremely annoyed this was happening to me,” he told me. “This was nothing but a great big hindrance to everything I like to do.” He refused to engage with the Internet or turn on the news for fear of adding to his stress. He had to reassure friends and family that he was all right without giving away his location. “I was literally fielding hundred of text messages saying, ‘No, I’m O.K., I’m safe, no need to worry about me,’ ” he said. To keep himself from sulking, he binge-watched Netflix. After the name of the real shooter, Darren Wilson, was released, Willman and his colleagues felt it was safe enough for him to finally return to work.

When we spoke this week, Willman was back on the job, but struggling to recover. “I’m stressed out, and don’t sleep very well,” he told me. Though he isn’t looking over his shoulder in real life, he feels scarred by the trauma online, and doubts he will ever return to social media again. He told me, “For a group who want information to be released to be willing to put peoples’ lives in danger—that’s pretty low. They turned me into a victim. They got it wrong.”

David Kushner is the author of the memoir “Alligator Candy” and other books.